Images

[Huguenot]

JoeyWarren:

YES! I have been in some of these prayer groups. We have gotten together to pray at Abortion Clinics, we have prayed over the War in Iraq. But do we do this on a regular basis? Yes for the Ultreya gathering for the Catholics that have done their “Cursillio” and the Protestants that have done their “Emmaus Walk”.

BUT, you have to analyze the composition of the Protestants in the group. When you pour hot water and scrub away the camouflage, you will find out that the Protestants that are in the group are the ones that recognize Catholics as CHRISTIANS.

Now, certain Protestant denominations that believe the Catholic church is PAGAN and in some cases A SATANIC IMITATION will never recieve an invitation from Catholics to pray together. Unlike Catholics who would not even consider refusing a request to pray together on a giving issue or problem.

In my mind( I can’t speak for other Catholics ) I see these that would refuse an invitation would in true essence disobeying the “Golden Rule”…

Note: our mission church in the next town before they built their own church, they used an Episcopal church to hold service. The Pastor of that church then did not see it as a problem. But after a change of pastors at that church, the new pastor had a problem with the Catholic church using his, so the services had to be moved to the community center until the church was built. That catholic church that was built, afterwards, it offered a Baptist Church usage of our facilities to hold their service when their facilties burned to the ground even though the same Baptists were anti-Catholic. We excercised the “Golden Rule”. The question is, 15 years later, if that Catholic Church burned to the ground, would that same Baptist church offer us their facilities until we could rebuild? To hazard a guess, I would say NO!

I hope this explains a lot.

In France, according to what I’ve heard, it seems that very few Protestants consider the Catholic Church as pagan or an imitation of Satan …
Praying together doesn’t necessarily mean doing so on a regular basis, here some groups do so, others meet occasionally, it depends on the local situation …
I’m glad to hear that it is also done in your country …
Of course only the Catholics and the Protestants that recognize each other as Christians can do so…
for me being a Christian is essentially a personal commitment, so I wouldn’t even say that all Catholics or all Protestants are Christians : maybe the situation is different in the USA, but here some people are officially Catholic or Protestant ( or they belong to another religion ) without believing in God at all, then it’s difficult for me to regard them as Christians even if they have been baptized as very young children …
I will feel closer to a Catholic who has committed his life to Christ, even if I don’t always agree with the way he expresses his faith ( and he won’t agree with the way I express mine ! ) than with a Protestant who doesn’t believe in God !!!

 

[cheddarsox]

-Do American Catholics and Protestants sometimes pray together ???

In a town I lived in in Virginia USA, every year ALL the churches got together and did the living stations of the cross through the downtown area.

Some areas are more ecumenical than others.

I have also lived in towns where everyone seemed to pitch in for prayer vigils, religious observances (like ecumenical Thanksgiving service for the whole city) , and works of service (Habitat for Humanity, soup kitchen etc).

My current town, even the Jewish temple shares in many ecumenical activities like the Thanksgiving svc, and the works of service.

cheddar

 

[Huguenot]

cheddarsox:

In a town I lived in in Virginia USA, every year ALL the churches got together and did the living stations of the cross through the downtown area.

Some areas are more ecumenical than others.

I have also lived in towns where everyone seemed to pitch in for prayer vigils, religious observances (like ecumenical Thanksgiving service for the whole city) , and works of service (Habitat for Humanity, soup kitchen etc).

My current town, even the Jewish temple shares in many ecumenical activities like the Thanksgiving svc, and the works of service.

cheddar

Thanks for your answer …I’m happy to know such things happen, by reading some posts I had the feeling that in the US the relationship between different religions was very bad …

 

[JoeyWarren]

Huguenot:

Thanks for your answer …I’m happy to know such things happen, by reading some posts I had the feeling that in the US the relationship between different religions was very bad …

The Bad is relative to where you live in the United States.

In the Northeast it’s not bad because it is predominately Catholic.

In the Northwest it’s not bad because it is predominately Free Will.

In the SouthWest it’s not a problem because the Mexicans make up the majority and they are Catholic.

In the Midwest, it is mediocre, because it borders on the south.

The South is bad because it is the stronghold of the Southern Baptists and the Pentecostals.

It’s even more bad in the Deep South which I regulate to Alabama(where I live), Mississippi, and Louisiana. Here you have the heart and soul of Anti-Catholicism. The number of Jack Chick’s tracts purchased by these 3 states equals the combined remaining States.

It’s not Protestants in general that make the relationships bad, it’s the fundalmentalist types with the “If it ain’t the King James Version, it ain’t a Bible” attitude and the ones that believe the Catholic Church is pagan or even satanic.

So when you read my comments, know that I comment from a place steeped in hatred of the Catholic Church. But the lighterside of this is that Thanks Be To God that the Deep South does not represent the United States as a whole.

Good Day and Live the Gospel

 

[Huguenot]

JoeyWarren:

The Bad is relative to where you live in the United States.

In the Northeast it’s not bad because it is predominately Catholic.

In the Northwest it’s not bad because it is predominately Free Will.

In the SouthWest it’s not a problem because the Mexicans make up the majority and they are Catholic.

In the Midwest, it is mediocre, because it borders on the south.

The South is bad because it is the stronghold of the Southern Baptists and the Pentecostals.

It’s even more bad in the Deep South which I regulate to Alabama(where I live), Mississippi, and Louisiana. Here you have the heart and soul of Anti-Catholicism. The number of Jack Chick’s tracts purchased by these 3 states equals the combined remaining States.

I don’t think that in France there are many fundamentalists among Protestants, we don’t agree with the Catholic Church on some points but it doesn’t mean that for us it is Pagan or Satanic …
we are in totally different situations, I don’t think that among French Catholics some hate us, the problem for us is that we form a very small minority as I have already told you, so for us the best region is Alsace-Lorraine or The Cévennes ( in Southern France ) because we are more “concentrated” there than in other regions ( but the “highest” concentration of Protestants in France means about 20% of the population, you can come safely !), and the “worst” regions are : Bretagne ( Brittany ), Normandy and Vendée : not because there are many Catholics there, that’s not a problem, but because …there are nearly no Protestants …
I voluntarily moved to Alsace precisely because at the beginning of my “career” I was …alone in my town !!!
I hope you won’t think I am anti-Catholic because of this : I didn’t mind at all if there were a lot of Catholics around, what “disturbed” me was that there weren’t ANY Protestants around…I felt strange … if there were any, I didn’t find them …maybe there was a family somewhere, and they also thought they were alone …I don’t know !!!

And since the rest of my family are atheists or agnostics I was isolated at home too…

In France, many Protestants are shocked by the declarations of some American Protestants, for example Pat Robertson ; I don’t know the ones some of you have mentioned as being anti-Catholic, like Chick…( but from several messages I’ve read I’ve understood that he writes anti-Catholic leaflets …)
Don’t worry, in France we don’t think that Catholics are Satanic …and we know you don’t eat children
If an American Protestant preacher came in our churches and started to tell us how bad Catholics are, I think everybody would laugh in his face : we all have Catholic neighbours, colleagues, friends and, for some of us, relatives, we’re surrounded by Catholics in all the aspects of our lives, we are sometimes invited to a Catholic church for marriages and so on , so we have contacts with you even without attending ecumenical meetings …
Of course it doesn’t mean that all French Protestants are tolerant, the same being true for French Catholics too, but I can say that intolerant behaviours are not common from both sides …that’s the feeling I have anyway …
It’s just that in some regions of France, some people don’t know us at all, and sometimes they ask strange things, sometimes they make us laugh …
when I was young I had been invited to a Catholic marriage, it was in a small church in a small village, I think I was the only person who was not Catholic, they saw it because, for example, I didn’t cross myself when the others did , and so on …
Afterwards, my friends told me that some friends of them had asked them if I was Moslem ; when they said no, they asked if I was Jewish …they said no again, and they were puzzled …it didn’t even cross their minds that I could be… Protestant !!! When they told me that I had a good laugh ( they didn’t know how I would react … ) but it shows that in some parts of France, we are totally “ignored”, we don’t even existe in people’s minds … ( because we nearly don’t exist in this region !!! )

so when you read MY comments, keep this in mind too !!!